


An Ever Fixed Mark

by Persiflage



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon-typical Ward, Episode Related, F/M, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Not Ward friendly, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4092859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scenes from AoS S2 showing the developing relationship between Skye and Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts), [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts), [Hazel75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazel75/gifts), [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts), [RowboatCop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/gifts).



> Right now writing, for me, is very, very hard. I am in constant chronic pain, so getting this finished may take me quite some time, but I hope to do missing scenes from the entire second season of AoS and make them into a coherent whole.  
> Title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:   
> _Let me not to the marriage of true minds_  
>  _Admit impediments. Love is not love_  
>  _Which alters when it alteration finds,_  
>  _Or bends with the remover to remove:_  
>  _O no; it is an ever-fixed mark_

Skye's in her bunk with her field suit laid out on her bed as she's about to get changed for the mission to break into the US government warehouse (and even as a member of the Rising Tide, that's not something she ever thought she'd be doing!), when someone knocks on her door. She calls 'Come in' immediately, expecting it to be May with a last minute bit of advice or information, and is startled when Coulson opens the door and steps inside.

"Sir?" She gives him a questioning look, surprised to see him for a second time today.

"I wanted to apologise," he says in a low voice, not moving from the door. His hands are clenched tightly together, she notices, and he looks remarkably ill-at-ease.

"For what?" she asks blankly.

"Vault D," he says, and she barely refrains from wincing. "I truly am sorry that you had to go down there Skye. And even sorrier that it probably won't be the last time I have to ask you to go down there."

She nods, then gives a shrug and turns away from him to look over her field suit and equipment. "Not your fault," she tells him, her voice sounding strangely distant to her ears. "He wouldn't talk to you, or anyone else, and we needed the intel."

She doesn't jump when he speaks from right behind her, but she'll admit to herself that she hadn't heard him move from his spot by the door. "That doesn't mean I have to like the situation."

She snorts. "I never imagined you would. That's not the kind of man you are, but it's exactly the kind of man he is."

"I should let you get changed," he says, "or May will tell us both off for holding up the mission."

She feels his hand press briefly against the space between her shoulder blades, and then he's gone.

As Skye strips out of her civvies and changes into her field suit, she wishes Coulson had offered her more than that brief touch. She can't help recalling the way he'd hugged her, back aboard the Bus, after he came to get her from Ward. That had been the best hug they've ever shared – their mutual relief at seeing the other safe had given their embrace an extra intensity, she'd felt, and she'd thought it marked the start of a new phase in their relationship. And she supposed it had, but not in the way she'd anticipated. They'd put down Garrett, captured Ward, set free Mike and Ace, then Fury had made Coulson the new Director of new SHIELD, and almost immediately Coulson had seemed to begin withdrawing – as if the Director of SHIELD had no business having a close personal relationship with a lowly Level 1 Agent.

Skye sighed, shook her head, then went to find May and the others. 

AC-S-AC-S-AC

As May drives the second SUV to the warehouse, Skye tunes out the conversation between Hartley (whom she likes, but doesn't know very well) and Hunter (who's too loud, too brash, and very older-brother annoying). She's thinking about Coulson and the distance between them, and how his request to her to investigate the weird symbols is the longest conversation she's had with him over this long, lonely winter. (She still doesn't know if Jemma's left for good or not; May's nearly always in SO mode, so even less chatty than ever; and Billy Koenig reminds her too much of his dead brother Eric. If it wasn't for Trip, who's a perpetual ray of sunshine and can be relied upon to nearly always cheer her up, she thinks she might have actually left SHIELD. Well Trip, and her nagging worries about Coulson's health and behaviour.)

A month ago she'd been sitting in the kitchen wearing sweatpants, a baggy t-shirt, and a sweater – her usual sleepwear since the Playground always feels chilly. She'd had a bad nightmare about the monster down in Vault D, and didn't want to try to sleep again, so she'd taken her laptop into the kitchen, made herself some coffee, and settled in to do some more work on the secure comms network she's been setting up for Coulson to use with their more distantly located recruits. The man himself had come into the kitchen, heading straight for the sink where he got himself a glass of water, and she guessed he hadn't seen her in the gloom until he turned around, and gave her a startled look. She'd been so pleased to see him, hoping they could chat like old times, that she'd given him a big, beaming smile as she greeted him.

"Hey AC." She sees a flash of pleasure in his eyes, as if he's missed her calling him that.

"Skye." He nods at her, then comes closer, taking a seat nearby, and she drinks him in, noting how rumpled he looks: his shirt sleeves folded back, his tie loose, and his jacket missing. "What are you doing up?" He gets a slightly panicked look in his eyes, but it's momentary, and she sees his shoulders relax again. She wonders why he'd be panicking about her being up in the middle of the night.

She pulls a face. "Nightmare," she mutters, and sees him wince sympathetically.

"I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. "I know why you've got him here," she tells him, and she can see it takes Coulson a moment to realise what – or rather who – she's having nightmares about, and he immediately looks guilty. "How much intel has he given you so far?"

"None," Coulson tells her bitterly, and Skye feels her eyes widen in astonishment.

"Why not?" she asks, then wonders if he can hear the anger, or perhaps it's betrayal, in her voice.

"He won't talk to me," Coulson tells her. 

She's frowns at him across the corner of the table, then narrows her eyes and compresses her lips into a thin line as she figures out what Ward's ploy is. "He won't talk to you because he wants to talk to me," she says flatly. 

He nods, watching her closely, and she feels her expression hardening, her spine stiffen, and her shoulders go back. She can't let Coulson know how much the idea repels her, she decides.

"Then I'll have to talk to him, won't I?" she says, although it's not really a question. 

"I won't send you down there unless it becomes absolutely necessary," he promises. "But yes, I probably will have to ask you to go down there and talk to him at some point. Because at some point he'll be the one with the intel we need to save lives, and you'll be the only one who can get that intel from him. I'm sorry."

She gives him a casual-looking shrug. "Okay." She's looking at him as intently as he's looking at her, and she suspects he's drinking in the sight of her as much as she is the sight of him. "Are you okay, AC? You're looking pretty rough."

He gives a not-so-casual shrug of his own. "Too much paperwork. Too many hours on planes, trying to recruit and rebuild."

She reaches over the table and clasps his hand in hers, and it feels like a surge of electricity goes through her body, setting her nerve-endings alight. She makes herself ignore the sensation. "Can I help you with anything?"

He swallows nervously, then says, "There is something. I – Could you come to my office?"

She nods, then closes her laptop and scoops it up from the table, tucking it under her arm, and he leads the way upstairs and along the hallway to his office.

As Skye follows Coulson to his office she feels a flutter of excitement in her belly: she's just had the longest conversation with him that she's had since they got here weeks ago, and he's got a favour to ask of her, one that doesn't involve going to talk to the monster in the basement. And yeah, she could have done without hearing that Ward will only talk to her – she'd hoped never to have to see or speak to him again, but she also knows that if Coulson needs her to, she will. She could never refuse to help him.

He gestures her to the couch across from his desk, then goes to pick up a file from the desk. She stares at him, wondering if it's just the strain of being the new Director of SHIELD that makes him look even more exhausted in this brighter light. There's something else about him, though– she's not sure what, exactly, but she suspects that there's more going on with him than he's told her so far. She's not going to push it, though, or not yet at least, because she'd much rather he just came out and told her what's wrong.

He sits beside her on the couch and passes her the file, which she opens to see photos of a bunch of weird symbols. "Oh these. I've seen these before," she tells him, and feels him freeze up beside her. She looks up quickly, and is startled by the horrified look on his face. 

"Coulson?" She puts her hand on his knee, even as he grabs her shoulders, his hands clasping painfully tight. 

"When? Where?" he demands breathlessly, arms shaking; he sounds terrified.

"Coulson, what's wrong?" she asks, baffled by his panicked reaction to her words.

"Where did you see these symbols?" he demands, his grip on her shoulders tightening.

"They were on a blackboard in the Todorov Building during that mission we did – the one where we met Akela Amador." She reaches up and breaks his hold on her. "You're hurting me," she tells him, tears stinging the backs of her eyes. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," he says quickly, and gets up from the couch to stand behind his desk. She gets to her feet, bringing the file with her, and before she even reaches the desk he begins speaking rapidly, explaining that the photographs in the file were in ex-Director Fury's toolbox; Coulson tells her that he wants her to research the symbols, using all available resources, even the Rising Tide, to find out their meaning or significance.

"I can do that," she says easily. "But will you please tell me what's wrong?"

He shakes his head and when she starts to move around the desk to his side, he moves too, making it clear that he doesn't want her to be close to him, and she stops immediately, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"I'll get on this right away, sir," she tells him in a formal tone, then she grabs her laptop and strides out, doing her best to remain dignified in her retreat despite her churning stomach and rising annoyance. 

Skye's spent the last month trying to find out what's going on with Coulson, and while he'd looked reasonably okay this morning when telling her that she needed to go down to Vault D, she knows there's still something going on with him, something more than the fact he's stressed by his role as Director. As Idaho, in the SUV ahead, pulls up, Skye brings her attention back to the task at hand, but she resolves, yet again, not to give up on trying to find out what's wrong with Coulson. She can't help him if she doesn't know, and the idea of not trying to help him is too ridiculous to even contemplate – helping people is what she does, it's all she's ever wanted to do, and she will help Coulson, no matter how distant he is with her.

She puts her shoulders back and concentrates on what she needs to do to get the six of them safely into the base. She'll worry about Coulson again later.


	2. Heavy is the Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the dialogue in this chapter comes directly from the episode.

Skye's in the lounge again, working on her laptop, but this time on the Obelisk, not the weird symbols Coulson has her researching – because she's certain that the 084 is somehow related to the symbols – when the man himself comes in and heads straight to the sink. She can't help wondering if he'd rather she left as she watches him get himself a glass of water. He stands with his back to her as he drinks, and she looks at the weary set of his shoulders, the tension in his back muscles (easily observable since he's clad only in a SHIELD-issue t-shirt and some sweat pants), and wishes she knew how to help him.

He stands there for some time, and after a while she feels uncomfortable about watching him when he's clearly unaware of her presence.

"You okay, Coulson?" she calls softly, and he's visibly startled by the sound of her voice, but when he turns around to face her, he looks less startled than unwell. "AC?"

"Bad dream," he tells her, and she nods her understanding, even as her eyes narrow and she looks at the sweat beaded along his hairline and the way his hand is trembling slightly as it holds the nearly empty glass. Before she can say anything, though, he asks, "What are you doing up?"

She gives a shrug. "I'm not sleepy right now." 

He nods, and she decides to try her luck – he can only refuse after all, and what's one more refusal to spend time with her after so many?

"I was thinking of watching a movie before I go to bed. You wanna watch with me?"

"Okay."

Skye feels her eyes go wide, but she turns her attention to shutting down her laptop to give herself time to recover – she truly hadn't expected him to agree. She leaves the computer on the table, then moves over to the couch, and gestures to it. He walks around the end, and his free hand brushes lightly against her forearm as he passes, and she can't help wondering if it's deliberate or not – it feels deliberate, but he's become so closed off over the last months that she can't get an easy read on him any longer.

"What do you want to watch?" she asks, grabbing the remote and settling beside him, sitting cross-legged, her knee a bare inch from his.

"I honestly don't mind," he says, "so long as it's not horror or aliens."

She chuckles softly. "Yeah, I get that." She flicks through the channels until she finds _The Thirty-Nine Steps_ , then she sets the remote on the arm of the couch and pulls a folded blanket down off the back from behind where she's sitting. 

"Share?" she suggests, and to her surprise he nods, so she unfolds it and he helps her to spread it across them both. 

Forty minutes later, she turns her head to say something to him about the movie, only to discover he's asleep, his head leaning towards her at an angle that makes her think he'll end up with a very sore neck. She pulls her eyes away and turns them resolutely back to the screen, but her attention's not really on the movie any more – she's remembering the conversations she had with Coulson earlier in the day, and wondering at the inconsistencies in his behaviour: 

**Earlier in the day**

"What the hell is that thing?" Skye demands as she and Coulson walk down the corridor together.

"I have no idea, but good work." He turns around and starts to walk away from her, and she stares at his retreating back in disbelief.

"Good work?" Coulson turns back around and comes back towards her. "How about 'Holy crap, Skye, we gotta get on that'? After a month of combing the planet for these things, we finally get a clue – "

"Right now we have more important problems," Coulson tells her, cutting her off, and she feels a surge of irritation until he adds, "A five alarm fire otherwise known as Lance Hunter."

"Is he – " she begins. She finds Hunter annoying, but at the same time, she'd hate for anything bad to happen to the guy.

"Captured," Coulson tells her. "If he talks, our entire operation's compromised. We'll have to burn the Base and evacuate." Skye shakes her head, trying to deny this possibility, and the Director continues, "I know, and we just retiled the bathrooms." He turns around and walks away, and Skye lets him go. She knows where his flippancy is coming from – he's using it to cover up how worried he is, in the same way that she uses humour to deflect others' attention from her.

She sighs quietly, then heads back to her bunk to get changed out of her field suit. She'll grab a shower and some coffee, then start researching the 084 – she knows it's important, and it's not like she can do anything about Hunter right now.

AC-S-AC-S-AC

Sometime later she realises that May's not back – she knows her SO would've stopped in for a debrief if she'd returned, and she's seen nothing of Hartley or Idaho either. After stopping off at the lab to see how the work on the cloaking device is getting on, she heads to Coulson's office. She knocks and waits a bit impatiently for him to open the door.

"I just wanted to report that Mack and Trip are working on cloaking," she tells him when he gets the door open. "So I'm free if you want me back in the field."

He stares at her and she wonders if he's spacing out on her. He stands in front of her, still holding onto the door, blocking her from entering the office, and she wonders what exactly it is he's hiding from her – because she knows there's something, something that's quite separate from the secrets he's keeping as Director.

"That won't be necessary. May's still out there."

"What about Hartley and Idaho?"

He walks away, moving behind his desk, and she sees him scratching at his shoulder as he looks down at a file on his desk. His silence speaks volumes, as it so often does to her. She walks into his office, standing in front of the desk.

"They're not out there, are they?" Without speaking, he glances up at her from the file he's flipping through, and she leans her hands on the top of the desk, taking a deep breath. "It was that thing, wasn't it? The object?"

He looks up again at that. "It was Creel." He looks down again and Skye's puzzled by his attitude.

"Sir, I need to get back out there and help May take him down." She moves closer to him as she speaks, and he looks up again.

"No."

"She's my SO," she objects. "I'm a Field Agent now, and I can handle myself." Surely he doesn't doubt her abilities – she had thought she'd more than proved herself capable by now.

"That's not what this is about," Coulson says.

"Then what is it about?" she demands. "The object? The symbols? Because I can't help if I don't know what's going on." She can feel her frustration building at the way he keeps shutting her out.

He moves around his desk to stand before her, his expression softening a little, and she thinks that maybe he'll finally tell her what's going on, but instead he says, "If you'd like to help, go down to the bunks and pack up Hartley's things."

She lifts her chin and stares at him, but he looks unrelenting, so she sighs. "Okay," she whispers. She starts to walk towards the door, then turns back, determined to try to get through to him. "I know you're the boss and you have to compartmentalise everything, but it's not healthy. You need to loosen up. Try – yoga – or something."

She crosses to the door as Coulson tells her, "I tried it, but I'm really not flexible." As she shuts the door behind her she hears him thank her, but she strides away, too frustrated with him to stay and attempt further conversation, even if the 'flexible' comment is begging for a response. 

AC-S-AC-S-AC

Skye's conversation with Hunter unsettles her a little because SHIELD is her family, even if it's growing to the extent where she no longer knows everyone who works here, and even though her relationship with Coulson isn't that great any more. She decides to go down to the firing range to practice as a way of clearing her mind: the concentration she requires is exactly suited to emptying her head of her worries about Coulson.

She's concentrating so hard that she doesn't notice she's being watched until she turns to hang up her ear defenders and goggles at the end of her session, and sees Coulson leaning against the wall behind her, his gaze intent.

"Sir?"

"You're getting very good at that," he says, nodding at the paper target that's full of strategically placed bullet holes.

"I practice," she says with a half shrug. She's wondering how long he's been standing there – it's not often she's unaware that she's being watched and it's a bit disturbing to think he might've been there for some time.

As if he knows what she's thinking (and it wouldn't be the first time), he moves forward to look more closely at the target before she can take it down, and says, "I just came to ask you if you're still monitoring that HYDRA frequency we shut down, and I didn't want to interrupt you."

She nods. "Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on it – well, not me personally – I've got a program to do that."

"Good." He takes the target from her and examines it closely, and she can't help noticing that he looks even more tired this close. She doesn't say anything, however, because there's only so many times she can ask him if he's okay before it'll start annoying him.

"Good work," he says, rolling the target into a tube. She reaches to take it from him, and he shifts it to his other hand, out of her reach. "I'll keep this for your records."

She frowns slightly as she realises that she's never seen paper targets in other agents' files, but he's the Director now, so maybe it's something new he's started.

"Coulson – " she begins, but he steps away from her.

"I'd better go or Billy will be looking for me." He turns on his heel and walks away, the roll of paper tucked under his arm as he pulls a tablet out of his jacket pocket.

Skye sighs, wondering just what's going on in his head these days, then she clears her station. It's nearly dinner time, and after dinner she's going back to her research.

**Now**

Her attention's brought back to the here and now when she feels a weight settle against her shoulder, and she discovers that Coulson's body has slid sideways slightly, so that his head is now resting against her shoulder. She finds herself charmed by the image, but at the same time, she knows she needs to wake him up or he'll have a horrible back ache if he stays in this awkward position. She reaches across her body with her right arm and clasps his upper arm, then gently shakes it.

"Wake up, AC."

He mutters something inarticulate, then his eyes open and he frowns at her, before his eyes go wide in shock. "What – ?" he begins, straightening up with a wince.

"It's okay, AC," she says reassuringly. "You had a nightmare, and came in for some water, and then you fell asleep watching a movie with me."

He groans, then rubs a hand over his face. "Sorry," he says, his voice raspy.

"Don't worry about it," she tells him. "I'm sorry I woke you up, but I thought you'd prefer to sleep in your own bed."

"Yeah." He pushes himself to his feet and steps away from her as she gets up more easily. He takes a couple more steps, and she can't help noticing how unsteady he seems.

"C'mon, AC, I'll walk you back to your bunk," she tells him. "You're half asleep still, I reckon."

"Yeah." 

She's surprised when he lets her take his arm, but she keeps her feelings to herself as she guides him through the halls and back to his room. She's not sure if he is still half-asleep or if he's disoriented from waking up somewhere unusual, but he doesn't resist as she pushes open his bedroom door and leads him over to his rumpled bed. She carefully ignores the rest of the room and resolutely doesn't think about him in his bed as she persuades him to climb in, before pulling the covers up over him. 

He mumbles her name, and his fingers land on her arm, then slide down her forearm as she starts to move away from the bed; impulsively, she leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Sleep, AC," she says softly, and he murmurs an agreement, his eyes already closing, before his head falls back. His breathing deepens and evens out, and she's only half surprised to realise he's already gone back to sleep. Shaking her head, she steps out into the corridor, then pulls the door closed behind her.

As she heads back to the lounge, she decides to grab her laptop and go to bed herself. She's definitely feeling weary by this point, and she hopes she can sleep without any nightmares of her own tonight.

As she slips under the covers of her own bed, she tries not to think about how much she would've liked to join Coulson under his covers, or how much she'd like to sleep curled up with him. She wonders if he'll remember any of this tomorrow, and hopes that it'll make him relent a bit about his policy of holding her at arm's length. She doesn't like the distance between them that he seems determined to maintain – and she's convinced it's bad for him as well as painful to her.

She sighs, then pushes those thoughts and frustrations aside. She slows her breathing down, then begins counting backwards from one hundred. Hopefully she'll be asleep before she hits one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it isn't clear, the opening scene of this chapter is set a few hours after Coulson's carving session that we see at end of the episode.


End file.
